


Kaelin Sawyer

by SimplyyCallum



Category: Original Work
Genre: Being Yourself, Coming Out, Gender and Sexual Diversity, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Themes, Non-binary character, Nonbinary, Other, Pansexual Character, Questioning, Transgender, he/him pronouns, learning to love yourself, they/them pronouns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2018-11-22 01:44:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11369955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SimplyyCallum/pseuds/SimplyyCallum
Summary: What happens when you realise that the pain and discomfort you feel is normal for some people and you learn you can do something about it? How do you deal with questioning parts of your identity, with anxiety or with depression? Kaelin Sawyer had no idea as well. You are not alone.





	1. Chapter 1

In this world we as a race have done everything we possibly can to make it as hard as possible to succeed, to live and to be happy. We as a race have set these challenges and built up this hate for one another, all without purpose, all without reason. 

So we try, as humans, to be happy and to live. But no one is happy all of the time, as I started to realise when I was 16. I started to realise just how unhappy I was in life. To begin with I started to realise how hard everything was. How it was harder than it had been before, harder than I was used to. It didn't bother me, I liked the challenge because I knew that eventually I would learn from it. But I was in pain. A horrible, gut wrenching pain that would twist and turn inside my stomach and make me feel sick.

I always knew I was different. 

When I was younger it wasn’t about being popular or being in a relationship. I just wanted to be happy. And I was, I found happiness in the little things. Laughing with my friends. Running around in the streets. Walking in the woods for what felt like hours. Sitting down and writing silly little stories. Drawing small doodles that didn’t really make sense. 

But as I got older I started to understand the world a little more. Everything was driven by power. School girls bullied, school boys picked on the people they didn’t find attractive. There was always a way that everyone followed and when you were different you were ripped apart, screamed at and blamed for not being normal. I wasn’t normal. I was bullied because I refused to fit in. Everyone around me seemed childish, always distracted by the media and celebrity gossip, all the girls helplessly falling over the popular boys in school that didn’t even care about them. 

I just didn’t care. I made friends but never anything more. I didn’t understand why they were all chasing this so called happiness in a relationship. I was content on my own, being myself and making my own happiness. I did my own thing, they got unwanted eyes on me. I was bullied to the point where my friends were few and far. 

I never understood the need to rely on someone else. Or so I thought. Now I look back I just think I was scared because I just never found anyone overly attractive. Naturally I looked at people and saw whether they were attractive or not to me. But I never had a type, whereas everyone else always did. I didn’t fit in, not in my mind anyway. All my girl friends only ever talked about the guys they found attractive, never the girls as well. So I thought it was wrong of me to notice that both genders had attractive features.

So I did the only thing I felt I could do - I turned to strangers, people I knew from clubs I rarely went to and people I often played online games with. Eventually all my real friends didn’t know who I was in school and all my school friends only knew a small portion of who I was. It took me a while but I made everyone forget who I really was, I crafted another person who was cold and heartless and always showed up. Everyone thought that was who I was. Few people ever got to know the real me.

Then I fell in love with my best friend. Suddenly I had this little piece of normality that all my peers at school bullied me for never having. But I kept it hidden, my relationship remained a secret to all my school peers for over a year before the truth came out to the few people who saw through some of the cracks in my carefully crafted front. 

When you fall in love it is like an experience of its own. It is always different for everyone involved and that is totally okay. When you grow apart from your first love it rocks your entire world. You never seem to understand why it happens but eventually you move past it. I made the mistake, as I'm sure many others have, of going back to my first love after we grew apart. Naturally we only made it work for so long before we knew we had to give up. 

But your love for someone never completely disappears. You always will love them in one way or another, sometimes you just value them more as a friend rather than anything more. Sometimes even months down the line, after you thought you were over them you will see them or they will do something that reminds you of everything you used to have and you begin to miss it deeply, many confuse this feeling for missing the person instead. 

I thought after I had my first boyfriend that everything would be okay, that I could proudly say to people 'yeah, I've been in a relationship before' and that would give me some kind of normality in the world. It worked for a while once I started college. I made new friends, I was not bullied for being different - for only every having that one relationship. 

But when you are older, as you grow closer to new people, you also grow closer to yourself. As you get older, people ask more important questions, ones that you actually have to think about. You tell people about yourself and then find yourself questioning your answer days later at 2am. Suddenly you rethink everything you have been through, and life is no longer as black and white as it was before.

I always knew I wasn't 'normal'. I never really fit in. People always asked the questions that should have made me learn the truth quicker. I was young, easily confused and scared. I saw what happened to people like me in the world. I didn't want that kind of life. I didn't want my friends to feel uncomfortable around me. People always told me to grow up and see the truth already. I see now that its not that I didn't want to, but rather I wasn’t ready. 

I was ready in the one year that the world went to shit. One kiss and suddenly all my thoughts over the years made sense. I guess I just wasn’t ready to face the truth. All my friends growing up saw life one way, you grew up and got a job, you got married and had kids. I wanted a life like that too. I wanted to grow up, I wanted to get a job that I enjoy and love. I wanted to have kids. Maybe that is why I was so insistent to myself that I only liked guys. Even though I knew it was okay to be bisexual, or have any other sexuality that falls into the LGBTQ+ community, it never clicked into my brain that those judgemental kinds from little school won't care about where I am in 10 years time, whether I have kids and if I do who I have them with.

I wasn't ready to acknowledge that I am pansexual until I knew who I was without the judgement of my past. It took me a while to learn who I was, I guess I've always had questions and ideas but I never wanted to accept them. Accepting my sexuality at 16 was the first stepping stone to figuring out who I am as a person. It was when I learnt that my sexuality doesn't change who I am, and that therefore who we are isn't defined by labels but by actions.

I still wasn't happy, for some unknown reason, and what are you supposed to do when you feel like you are dying, when everything around you seems to becoming more and more pointless and you can't find the motivation to complete your work. How are you supposed to deal when you can no longer see a future, when all you see is a dark cloud that terrifies. When you feel like your grip on life is failing, your hand is cramping out and you know you're bound to let go sooner rather than later. 

What are you supposed to do?

Are you supposed to hold on longer, harder? 

Are you supposed to pretend everything is okay and ignore the problem? Or do you accept it, not try to prevent it and eventually let go? How do you let go, when everyone around you are rooting for your happiness, for your survival. How are you supposed to feel okay, knowing you tried hard but not hard enough to make everyone else happy? How are you supposed to move on when you’ve left behind nothing but sadness and pain? 

How do accept that?

Is it possible to continue on living your life even though it feels like your lungs are slowly filling up and soon you won't be able to breathe. Can you move on when all you want to do is fill your body with something bad, something that will hurt but give you a thrill because at least that will be a good pain rather than what you're experiencing now.

How are you supposed to enjoy all the little things that still hold some good in life, when the action or equipment makes you want to hurt yourself. When you pick up a knife to carve the meat, do you find yourself staring at the blade thinking how easy it would slice through your skin? How it would cut so precisely with so little pressure? 

What do you do when you start staring into the boiling water, thinking how much would it really hurt if you spilt it on your arm. Whether the scar would remind you that you are human and you can be hurt even more than the pain you are feeling inside your head.

Is there a reason for this?

What do you do when you start wishing that a car would hit you, or someone would attack you or something would happen just so that you could experience true pain. Just so that you could experience something physically painful so that everything inside your head doesn’t hurt quite as much anymore.

Is it even possible to feel like you aren't alive any more, because the pain you are in is numbing - almost like it doesn’t exist anymore. Do you feel like you don’t fit in as well? Can you not walk into a full room because you are too scared that everyone will see right through your carefully crafted disguise?

Why is it possible to feel like two different people? The real you, who is in pain and struggling but can occasionally push past it and be happy and enjoy life. And the fake you, the you that you allow everyone else to see because they don’t understand you.

Why is it possible to feel so alone in a crowded room?

How do you pick yourself up everyday, to enjoy the little things that you used to enjoy when they are full of things that can hurt you? How do you pick yourself up from that kind of feeling, go to work or college and pretend everything is fine. Why is it possible to have a smile of your face, as if none of those feelings were there, when you're with your family or friends?

Why are those feelings there? How do you get rid of them? Before it is too late…

I don't want to do something I will regret, I don't want to go be who I used to be but lately all I can think about it how easier it would be to pick up a cigarette and smoke, to buy something a little bit worse and take it just so I can feel something that I recognize. Or how nice it would be to go out and set something a light just so I can watch the flames burn.

Is it ok to not want to be left alone because you fear what might happen, what you might do or what you might take. Is it ok to not want to surround yourself with people you care about and who care about you because you know that they can stop you from doing something. Is it ok to be at war with yourself? Half of your mind wanting to be reckless and feel a different kind of pain whereas the other side wants to get help and listen to your friends because its terrified of what might happen. 

How many close calls can you sit through before enough is enough? How many times can you almost step in front of that car before your common sense kicks in and you remember that it isn't such a good idea. How many times with you have the blade just above your skin, when you can feel the coldness so close it's almost touching and then you remember that there isn't any coming back from that, that if you hold off maybe everything will be ok. How many times can that happen, before it doesn't happen anymore. And something bad happens instead. 

Is there really a chance of everything working out okay?

What do you do when you wake up one morning and feel better than you have in a week, finally like yourself again. How do you move forward with your life when you wake up the next day or the day after that and suddenly your in that dark place again? Do you just look forward to the good days. Do you start to hate every bad day? Or do you work with what you have, embracing the good days and dealing with every bad day - slowly working towards having more good days than bad days until, hopefully one day, there are no more bad days. 

Can you stand up and admit that you're not okay? Do you have that one person in your life that would understand but you are too afraid to admit everything to them? Do you fear not being accepted. Fear being told you're overreacting. Fear being told you're attention seeking? Do you fear that you'll be told your fears are good enough, they that aren't real?

I don't understand these feelings. I won't pretend to understand them. I can not even give you a reason as to why these feelings are so very real. But these feelings are real. Whether they exist only in your head or you are struggling on the outside too. It doesn't matter. Because your feelings matter. No one can tell you what is or is not going on inside your head. So if you're at war, then fight your battles. Not lay down your weapon because someone told you their belief goes against yours. 

Your beliefs are valid. You are important. You will live, because you matter. It doesn't matter if you don't know who you are yet, there is no rush and yeah there will always be people who will judge you but there will always be people who love you for you. 

So you just do you, maybe one day you'll figure out what that means. But trust me when I say you will learn to live with whatever you're struggling with, and other people are out there who are struggling too and together you can learn how to struggle a little less because of love and friendship.

I am still learning about my identity and I am still learning about how to be comfortable in my own body but I am okay, and you will be too. I took the first step to being happy when I was 17, I made friends with a few people who had a mutual youtuber in their subscriber list. This friend identified as transgender and so knew a little bit about learning about who they were. I spoke to them about questioning once I admitted to myself that for the past 5 years I had been questioning. 

This led to me speaking to a friend in person about the fact that I was questioning, I hadn't known this friend all that long but I knew that being someone who also identified as pansexual that the possibility that they shut me down was low. Actually saying the words out loud to someone in a setting that wasn't as private as I would have hoped was such an incredible feeling, it felt like I was finally being true to myself and that's when I knew I was making the right step forward.

I identify as non-binary and pansexual. These do not define who I am, my gender and sexuality should not be objectified and used a fuel on a fire for a hate war. Love is love and gender is something we as a race have forced upon ourselves - we made it up, gender doesn't define people. Our actions, ours words, our way of morals - that is what makes us who we are.

I don't fit into any of societies boxes all neat and tidy ready to be shipped out into the great big world like everyone other "normal" person. I am not apart of the 'society norm' and I never want to be. My name is Kaelin Sawyer and this is the story of how I found the courage to be myself in a world where people like me are still being killed.


	2. My name is...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Very short piece about how our past is part of us, whether we like it or not, and that it is okay to still not have everything figured out.

I am Kaelin Sawyer. This is not the name I was born with and this is not the name of the person I lived as for 16 years of my life. My name is Kaelin and I have struggled with my identity since I was 11. I was born with a different name, a gender marker which would later cause me pain, and a skin condition which resulted in a lot of bullying. 

Growing up I was your typical tomboy, I played all the boys games and I hung out with the boys in school. I liked running around topless, I liked having short hair and I hated wearing dresses. I played with hot wheels and Lego, but i also played with babies and dolls. I used to want to be a police man, but when I realised I would have to be a policewomen and women were treated differently I changed my mind. I went to karate across the street at the church hall, I played football and hockey after school and I started smoking at 11 because I thought it was cool and I hung out with an older crowd.

When I was 11 I started to question my sexuality, it was probably before then but the first time I remember was during one of the first times I was smoking with at the time my best friend. We were sat in a car park with a lighter each that we had stolen from our mothers and between the two of us we had two cigarettes, again which we had stolen from our mothers. The ground was still kind of damp and we were sat in the back corner of the curb round the back of the shops. It was chilly out, I remember, and we were holding hands because we were still new at this thing that we thought was cool. I was never sexually attracted to my friend, she was just kind of this convenient person to try new stuff with. She must have seen my like her convenient try new stuff with person too because together we did a lot of stuff for the first time - smoking, kissing girls, starting fires, fist fight, riding our bikes on a motorway (we never did this again that shit was scary for two 12/13 year olds). 

When I was 13 I stumbled across a video on the internet late at night when I should have been doing that all important high school homework. I don't remember the video but I remember it spoke to me and caused me to look into the channel which had posted it. The video? "Transgender: The little things". This one small 2-3 minute video sparked so much confusion in my life and I was drawn into researching the term transgender and the feelings behind it. At this point I had already been unhappy with my gender for some time, but I had never had a word to describe why some times a year I would always find myself 'praying' to a God I didn't believe in to wake up with a penis. This video by Alex Bertie changed my life and I didn't even know it. Because of Alex I ended up closely following Alexander Jasper-Jay's journey from posting songs he had written about what it meant to be trans to the moment he finally got on T a year later. I was consumed with following these peoples journey's and I was questioning my own gender but fear always stopped me from doing anything. 

Eventually, I got a hair cut and suddenly half of the pain I was feeling wasn't as bad and for a time I even starting to identify as gender queer, though this was in secret on an Instagram account that few of my friends had access to. No one ever asked questions so I never told anyone, I just got good at hiding my pain. After some time I realised I didn't feel 100% man or female so I decided to grow my hair out and try to be a little bit more feminine. I felt like something was wrong with me because the idea of makeup and dresses made me want to cry. I was playing a role in my life, one where I was happy and healthy and had never questioned my gender or my sexuality. I tried my best to just be me, to be happy and just get on with life. 

Over the years I pushed down my feelings about gender, i pushed away the fact that I never felt a connection with my birth name because it always felt too feminine and i started to use a nickname instead. I accepted my sexuality long before I told people about it, I didn't feel the need to come out to begin with because I was using the label queer or pansexual to describe it. My sexuality was something difficult to navigate because I wasn't sure about my gender. I ended up finding a label which didn't suggest gender to anyone but still described my feelings. When I first came out to a group of friends I never actually gave it a label, it was more of "holy shit this girl was really hot" and we breezed right over the subject.

Being open about my sexuality gave me a confidence to do other things which made me happy, this led to me finding friends within the LGBTQ+ community and slowly I learnt to accept that it was okay to be feeling the feelings I had been suppressing for so many years. Almost 6 months later and I'm still dealing with the feelings that I had suppressed for so long but I am finally more comfortable with my gender identity, hence the new name we already mentioned. 

I am Kaelin. I love to read. I love to write. I love photography. I love to cook and bake and I'm an animal lover. I am pansexual and transgender non-binary. I want to do something with my life that helps others, I want to understand how the world works and how people tick and I want to help people. The reason I tell you this is because figuring myself out included figuring out my gender identity and sexuality, but it also included figuring out what are my hobbies and interests. Your hobbies, your interests and how you identity is a part of who you are, but individually that is not all you are. You are you because of your memories, because of your loves, your hobbies, your past, your identity and because of what drives you.

It is okay to have your own story, it is okay to be scared or unsure and it is okay to explore different feelings in your life. You are never to young or old to try something new, other then maybe drugs and smoking please wait until you are at least 16. You are the person who is in control of your life, no one else. It is okay to not know what you want to do, where you want to go and even who you are. You've got years to figure it out and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.


End file.
